How Medical Systems Solve Clinical Workflow Challenges with TigerConnect Roles and Teams

The healthcare industry is undergoing a dramatic transformation. More patients in the system and increasingly complex industry regulations make it difficult to manage clinical workflows across medical providers, groups, teams, and hospitals. According to a recent analysis of 23,000 medical malpractice lawsuits, it’s estimated that 7,000 of these cases were preventable with better communication. In fact, those clinical communications breakdowns resulted in nearly $2 billion in malpractice costs and almost 2,000 preventable deaths. 

Reliable and effective healthcare demands a functional collaborative effort across clinicians, surgeons, and healthcare facilities. Whether it’s transferring medical records, providing access to scans and images, or facilitating diagnoses and patient interactions – integrated clinical communication is a must. With so much at stake, providers like the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) are investing heavily in simplifying clinical workflows.

 

Expedite Communication and Trigger Urgent Actions with TigerConnect Impact patient outcomes & the bottom-line through expedited communication Register Today

 

Improving Stroke Clinical Workflows at UMMC

Based in Baltimore, Maryland, UMMC owns and operates more than 13 hospitals across the state – with more than 2,500 licensed beds and 122,300 patient admissions annually. As one of the largest private employers in the region, the health system’s nearly 30,000 employees include 4,600 physicians across 150 locations. At the heart of this healthcare infrastructure is the health system’s stroke rehabilitation services, guiding patients through every stage of treatment and recovery – from diagnosis to rehabilitation.

As a certified primary stroke center, UMMC adheres to a range of standardized performance measures, including treatment, transfers, and coordination across a holistic, interdisciplinary stroke care team. This integrated team includes a broad range of roles, including admissions that introduce patients into the system, nursing staff ensuring a seamless clinical workflow, and a range of physicians and residents covering radiology, surgery, and rehabilitation. Effective patient care at UMMC demands fast, well-coordinated role-based clinical collaboration – powering faster patient treatment and throughput. That’s why the facility launched an Epic electronic medical record system (EMR) in June of last year to shift from a phone-based to a digital consultative model.

Zeroing In on Clinical Communication and Collaboration

But adoption of its Epic EMR was only the first step in its journey to advance patient care. The real key was plugging in a clinical communication and collaboration infrastructure to enable cross-team consulting – allowing groups and teams to operate as an integrated unit through real-time collaboration. One of the biggest challenges facing health systems like UMMC is the ability to connect all roles and stakeholders into one platform. To meet these challenges, health systems are turning to solutions like TigerConnect Roles and Teams to create a connected healthcare ecosystem.

Perhaps the most critical function of cross-collaboration is the ability to reach the right colleague, group, or team by role and shift schedule – delivering quick answers and better care collaboration. The ability to immediately connect with predefined yet customizable groups of Roles and individuals on an event-by-event basis is immensely valuable. For UMMC, TigerConnect Roles and Teams was the answer.

The Importance of Roles and Teams

TigerConnect Roles and Teams enables health systems to eliminate time wasted by manually tracking down contact information for on-call specialists or staff. With Roles and Teams, the right person can immediately be found by role without needing to know their name, speeding care collaboration. Predefined groups can be alerted and mobilized consistently at the same time to coordinate care – while new members can be added and removed quickly.

Additionally, Roles and Teams makes are beneficial when activating rapid response teams for emergency care. The Teams function empowers caregivers to search and mobilize code teams in real-time. The need for pager alerts, phone calls, or overhead paging to activate emergency responses is eliminated – and collaboration takes place fast and efficiently.

Achieving Holistic Communications

TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Pro helps UMMC communicate in real-time across care teams and shifts with secure text, video, and voice calls. As the hub for clinical communication and collaboration, the platform improves workflows, accelerates response times, and streamlines clinical collaboration across teams. The HIPAA-compliant and HITRUST-certified platform allows sensitive information, including photos, videos, and documents, to be shared across the healthcare ecosystem.

Addressing some of the industry’s biggest organizational challenges, the platform also is critical to streamlining and optimizing clinical workflows and patient volumes. This immediately eliminates process redundancies and ultimately reduces stress on overworked staff and reduces burnout.

The Road Ahead: Leveraging Clinical Collaboration

The healthcare industry is at a crossroads during this period of increased digital adoption. Successful patient treatment and care demand streamlined clinical workflows across facilities, physicians, specialists, and hospitals. Health systems like UMMC are leading the way with their adoption of real-time clinical collaboration tools such as TigerConnect Roles and Teams. Looking to improve care coordination and clinical workflows within your organization?

Tags: role-based collaboration, Clinical Communication and Collaboration, Role-Based Messaging, healthcare workflows, Clinical Collaboration, Clinical Communication